Best Counterpoint Poems
Life is music that drifts in open spaces
sometimes a brash crescendo
that brims with the fullness of now
when stories break from narrow, rigid scripts
stifling random routine
Life is free wheeling inventiveness
peacockish
a feathered tapestry
parading like a wedding dress down the aisle
Sometimes life is a ping pong bounce of sorrow
giant ball
that blurs the sky
that covers our eyes
a fog creeping into ruined places
Life is a tumble of forces
a counterpoint of malice and joy
that goes in an unexpected direction
like the connective chords of love
an airy drift
amplified
in the ringing rush of time
Poem composed: July 2/2022
Categories:
counterpoint, appreciation, encouraging, growth, life,
Form:
Free verse
In transit through the time-zones, trails her colours everywhere,
Her spectrographic spectrums lance ethereal through the air,
Fragmenting rainbow spears and curves of bending light,
Arcing jet-streams counterpoint with sunspots blinding bright.
And in the dreams I have of her beneath blown skies of tangerine,
Angelic, incandescent, paints the sweetest forms I’ve ever seen.
Elated on the desert winds she flickers some prismatic ghost,
Tripping ruined beauty from each pillar to each mystic post,
Deep emerald light refracted as cracked ice in shining eyes,
A telepathic temptress breathing winter sleep and summer sighs.
And in the morning sun that kisses glacial seas of bathtub blue,
She walks the dunes of memory, on golden beaches combing through.
Categories:
counterpoint, life, love, mystery, nostalgia,
Form:
Verse
there is, indeed,a relationship
between music and poetry
creation! expression! release of things inside
If I had experienced neither, when I had died
And had to value the worth of my life,
And rate the influence my existence generated
for the general good, I'd be shy
How can I explain my worth, after I did die..
On this point I'd be proud,
Cause somehow I was so lucky,
To experience the joy of both
and did my best to leave a small mark
of my thoughts upon the earth
If but one word, one song,
one counterpoint jam, one painting
that I had done,
had meant something
to someone, than in this regard,
I have won!
Categories:
counterpoint, faith, hope, life, music,
Form:
Bio
A parting shot
Baristas bang to level the grounds
Constant caffeinated sounds
Murmured speak of 'where to next'?
Lonely figures sit and text
Gluten-free on plates piled high
Condensing people passing by
Foreign tongues that click and slur
Counterpoint a song from Blur
Buy 'to go' to cut the cost
By patronage the past has lost
Dusty corners, crumbs they've missed
Pierced lip and tattooed wrist
How strange our habits, then and now
That beg the questions when? and how?
Suspended nylons now replaced
By skin-tight leggings trimmed and laced
Time has changed the way we think
Of what we eat and what we drink
Like poetry that used to rhyme
Now lost in Jabberwocky slime.
Categories:
counterpoint, today,
Form:
Couplet
Love's Symphonic Passion
by Odin Roark
Shimmering whispers urge forth,
A beginning seeks release from darkness,
The voicing of struggle proclaims arrival,
Like miniature cymbals of resolute announcement,
The humble cries of emergence
Clash ever so quiet with air and space,
Once portending grace,
Now its melodic genesis.
The matrixes of parent/conductor
Anxiously hum nursery rhymes
Through white enameled side-rails,
Vertical portals to unfettered ears,
Absorbing even when sleeping,
Evolving passion's invitation.
The precious first movements
Grow from those one-finger dissonant phrases,
Sometimes pounded upon the black and white landscape
Where an merging piccolo's infant smile
Finds support by paternal contra bass and maternal cello echoes.
Remembrances of tinkling melodies
Soon enjoin its pure and simple
With conflicted movements of trial and error,
Evolving the inevitable adagio of growing up.
Hence forth
The scherzo's innocence of adolescence
Crescendos into threatening measures,
Where layered tones of choices
present challenge,
chaos,
counterpoint to independence,
or sympatric harmony.
The family of voicing
Develop love's thematic material,
Rhythms,
Keys,
And more complex harmonies,
Creating the free fantasia,
A coalescing of passion's varied workouts.
Its strings worn thin,
Arriving at life's largo movement of peace,
That place of reflective consonance,
The weight of its chambered containment
Rests forth its closing bars,
Housing now but the waning echo of a baby's chorus.
Its shimmering whispers
Float upon one last wave of the baton,
Stirring life's ethereal essence
Into heroic chorus
A higher bonding…
Awaits.
Categories:
counterpoint, love, music,
Form:
Prose Poetry
“EN POINTE”
My Darlings, what a lovely way to pass the time “en pointe.”
Arching your back, trying desperately to counterpoint the feet,
The smile on your faces can not hide the pain of it all.
Categories:
counterpoint, satire
Form:
Sijo
Alphonse Mucha's art was so influential it helped create Art Nouveau.
A flamboyant sensuous style, with softness, swirls, curls and beauty.
It heralded and celebrated new art as a counterpoint
to the dawn of the harsh steel and smoke of the industrial revolution.
Inspiring the unique creations of architect Antoni Gaudí,
Sowing the seeds for another revolution in style - the Art Deco movement.
Mucha's style and grace in posters and art works truly showcased aesthetic vales
a flagrant appreciation of beauty, style and good taste.
It celebrated women, portrayed in flowing robes and curvaceous, poised with lush flowers in their hair.
There were halos, crescents, swirls and lots of flowers in the background.
The Art Nouveau movement embraced all forms of art and design
incorporating the swirls and curves of Mucha's paintings and posters including:
architecture, furniture, glassware, graphic design, jewelry, painting, pottery,
metalwork, textiles, advertisements, even appearing on Czechoslovakia's currency notes.
Alphonse Mucha's art and design are truly beautiful and inspirational.
Categories:
counterpoint, art,
Form:
Prose Poetry
Counterpoint chaos
Rules Beethoven's Pathetique....
Then the adagio!
Categories:
counterpoint, beauty, music,
Form:
Haiku
Soundscape Strata
Did Bach know to what end
his harvest of melodies-in-parallel would become?
Scholars agonize
Was creation of counterpoint
musical destiny
a hybrid fruit of beauty
knowing no boundary
bewildering those of first look
given musical staffs
voicings and manuscripts
always conformed to traditional confinement?
What spurred his palette of sound
to become one with the elusive rainbow
providing independence through marriage of numbers
allowing prolonged courtship
sanctioning destinies to verge
converge
separate
return to coalesce?
And so
From guitar
to clavichord
string quartets
to symphonies
counterpart airs were discovered
became melodious architecture
challenging new musical frontiers
voiding tundra's boundary rules
reducing history's brass survey monuments
to mere reflections of past memory
Popularization of Bach's invention
soared beyond the artistic elite
for in '55 "Picnic" graced movie screens
initiating the unsuspecting
elevating emotion with layered melodies
Moonglow playing under the love theme
Bach's kaleidascope of synchronous colors
reached the century's romantics
keyed into a music major
minored ala Brubeck
scat-a-tized via Ella and Mel
and
made unity of opposites a given
Thus
From Bach's synthesis of two dimensions
musical ironies evolved
influencing writers' language
line upon line
stanza to stanza
chapter to chapter
making magical
the double entendre
metaphor
subtext
contrapuntal imaginings
all translated into
infinite language-in-progress
With applause knowing nowhere to go
except to acknowledge the roots of prodigy
a high five to the man
who pioneered so much of our soundscape
taught us all the numbers of romance
ironically created attraction to opposites
arpeggios with many colors
intimacy amidst chaos
Encore Mr. Bach
Encore
Categories:
counterpoint, music,
Form:
Free verse
(This is meant as sort of a counterpoint to all the mushy sentiment of "Valentine Day.")
The Untamable Shrew
By Elton Camp
It’s ever harsh words and criticize
Always excused by endless lies
All he says and does is wrong
Every day the same old song
With outrage, she will say
“Why do YOU do this way!”
For him, it’s to be expected
Every word will be corrected
All decisions are her domain
His views, she will disdain
Whether a matter great or small
She has her way, on them all
Half a sentence he may get out
Before she interrupts with a shout
Daily misery is to be his life
Filled with unending strife
Categories:
counterpoint, angst,
Form:
Rhyme
Brothers,
Should we always return to the old tune
Of time and again tuning to counterpoint
Of the past pain; a throbbing return
Right at the very tipping point
Of the pinnacle to touch promised power?
Brothers, how long should we bear
Blood-spattered battles of their
Own making and their own imagination,
Their own thoughts, and their own creation?
How long should we let the pagans
Pluck off feathers from our wings
–to which stupid plundering sings –
Partying the persistence of the polluted plan
As the vampires again and again
Have the plan prepared and bared
As did our yesteryear’s gods,
Leaving us without defense, and in tense?
Let us pound the drums and tom-toms of war
And let us let the reverberating sound soar
High, high, high up there in the air
As yesteryear’s war songs we prepare
For our juggled and gagged flag to fly
Again against their blood-red raided sky.
Brothers,
Then let us swallow a little while
Their bitter bile as we prepare them to pace their last mile
Categories:
counterpoint, anger, emotions, feelings, political,
Form:
Alliteration
It is the scent of you, that breathes in me.
It is the music when you laugh
that chants across the apse
between our heartwalls,
signaling desire, tossing off forever
thoughts of penitence and shame.
It is the holiday of you
that sings in me.
My eyes need not fulfill the longing in me;
memory alone creates the picture of black hair
in counterpoint to your brown visage, showing
love that mystics know,
and glowing with an eastern light
from eyes that tell instead of see
and still withhold the quintessential mystery
of you.
So it is that with a rapture
I may part your thighs.
and dream inside a newer form
of dreaming; you present me
with a prototype of lust
to celebrate divine intent.
I may harden, knowing
that the juncture of your power
to seek the world becomes
my universe at home--my refuge
in a cannonade of fury
at relentless flesh turned back.
Yet not forever will it yield,
for in its place your own sweet cavern
makes surrender, victory"
my pounding, cadence to the song
of sacred violence that ages beg.
The voiceless thunder of our kiss
is just an echo to our cries of welcome
to the second death
to rival paradise.
Inside your body I release
the restless children of my love,
bursting into you to claim a prize
they cannot understand, their dying
glorious in fulfillment.
Ride with me, my love,
inside the chariot of sweetness;
madness is our quest
above the fiery wheels--
the moment of the flood
our own eternity!
~
Categories:
counterpoint, love, longing, may, universe,
Form:
Free verse
I crave the timeless peace and joy
This music often brings
To souls with whom the world would toy
And run around in rings.
Careless of mood, the master speaks
With string and pipe and voice;
No other strain my spirit seeks,
My Desert Island choice.
His counterpoint and melody
Shine through when days are dark;
None brings such solace yet, but he :
Johann Sebastian Bach.
Categories:
counterpoint, music,
Form:
Verse
As Samuel saw vaulted Xanadu of Kublai Khan fame
In smoke-filled corridors of sweat-drenched Opium-eaters
Did I spy a vision so surreal as to render all my sentient senses to nought
And to replace them with a miasma of arcane thoughts.
I glimpsed of things most unimagined through vaporous clouds
Of effulgent smoke from wampums more confusing
than the peace of amity that it connoted.
Through numbing mind yet not fully suppressed
I beheld many-pillared corridors in a dazzling sequence
Of multi-hued columns - Doric, Ionian and Corinthian.
And through this tortuous labyrinthine maze ran
A languorous limpid stream off a meander
From an ox-bow lake, with a murmurous mutter
As it hop scotched the rifts on the floor.
With Cyclopean vision, floating wraith-like, in the distance
I beheld a dazzling high-domed hall,
The dazzle from a myriad gorgeous maidens
Each draped in dresses so diaphanous as to defy its definition!
And a prima donna sang in sonorous counterpoint to the susurration of the stream.
From up on high like a falcon flighted,
In anachronistic contrast I verily beheld
A jeaned and jacketed - Angelina Jolie!
It was then that I confirmed to myself -
My mind had truly busted!
Categories:
counterpoint, confusion, gothic, magic, visionary,
Form:
Free verse
Rise slowly from eastward, O western setting sun! Blaze
Anew! Get up, swell the human spirit says
Your constant companion moon of days,
Lending wonder to cardinals, chickadees and ‘jays
Who constantly concertize and amaze
Passersby who are in awe of the glaze
Of glory you send! The laze
Of summer creeps upon the landscape, pays
A visit with the promise of ways
To leisurely wind our maze
Through vines tightly wound and gaze
Upon seashore, sand, and plum trees which raise
Our thoughts to delightful eating pleasures; a craze
Of oranges, cinnamons, and chocolates; sways
On breezes, lightly dancing across a phase
Of the setting sun; with piercing yeas
I cheer, settling on her face, the autumnal haze
Reflecting in counterpoint to raze
Prior passages and issue nays!
Recreate browns and grays
Metamorphosizing to new clays!
Categories:
counterpoint, age, change, emotions, philosophy,
Form:
Free verse